The Extradition Farce — why the delay in reform?

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Out­rage con­tin­ues to swell about the per­emp­tory extra­di­tion of Brit­ish cit­izens to face tri­al on tenu­ous charges abroad.

Thanks to the tire­less cam­paign­ing of dis­traught fam­ily mem­bers, a grow­ing anger in the UK press, and indig­nant ques­tions and debates in Par­lia­ment — even our somn­am­bu­lant MPs have roused them­selves to state that Some­thing Must be Done — the Extra­di­tion Act 2003 is now centre stage, and reform of the law will no doubt occur at some point.

As there is a grow­ing con­sensus, why the delay? I have a the­ory, but first let’s review some of the most troub­ling recent cases.

The case that really brought the issue to wide­spread pub­lic atten­tion is the dec­ade-long extra­di­tion battle of Gary McKin­non. With this sword of Damocles hanging over his head for so long, poor Gary has already effect­ively served a 10-year sen­tence, uncer­tain of his future and unable to work in his chosen pro­fes­sion. Thanks to the indefatig­able cam­paign­ing of his moth­er, Janis Sharp, his case has received wide­spread sup­port from the media and politi­cians alike.

Des­pite this the Home Sec­ret­ary, Theresa May (who has recently been work­ing so hard in Jordan to pro­tect the rights of Abu Qatada), has dragged her feet abom­in­ably over mak­ing a decision about wheth­er Gary should be extra­dited to the US to face a pos­sible 70-year pris­on sen­tence — even though the UK invest­ig­a­tion into his alleged crime was aban­doned way back in 2002.

Then there is the more recent case of stu­dent Richard O’D­wyer, wanted in the US even though he lives in the UK and has broken no Brit­ish laws. He is facing a 10 year max­im­um secur­ity sen­tence if extra­dited. Once again, his moth­er, Julia, is tire­lessly fight­ing and cam­paign­ing for her son.

Most recently, Chris Tap­pin, a retired busi­ness­man and golf club pres­id­ent, has been shipped off to a Texas high secur­ity pen­it­en­tiary fol­low­ing what sounds like a US entrap­ment oper­a­tion (a tech­nique not leg­ally admiss­able in UK courts), and faces a 35 year sen­tence if con­victed.

Des­pite hav­ing turned him­self in, this eld­erly gent, who walks with the aid of a cane, is con­sidered such a flight risk that he was last week denied bail. Once again, his wife Elaine has come out fight­ing.

My heart goes out to all these women, and I salute their tenacity and bravery. I remem­ber liv­ing through a sim­il­ar, if mer­ci­fully briefer, four months back in 1998 when the UK gov­ern­ment tried and failed to extra­dite Dav­id Shayler from France to the UK to stand tri­al for a breach of the OSA. I remem­ber with crys­tal clar­ity the shock of the arrest, the fear when he dis­ap­peared into a for­eign leg­al sys­tem without trace, the anguish about his life in an ali­en pris­on.

And I remem­ber the fright­en­ing moment when I real­ised I had to step up and fight for him — the leg­al case, deal­ing with MPs and the end­less media work, includ­ing the ter­ror of live TV inter­views. And all this when you are wor­ried sick about the fate of a loved one. Shall I just say it was a steep learn­ing curve?

In the wake of the recent extra­di­tion cases, there have been ques­tions in Par­lia­ment, motions, debates, reviews (Down­load Review), and there is an ongo­ing push for an urgent need for reform. And no doubt this will come, in time.

So why the delay? Why not change the law now, and pre­vent McKin­non, O’Dy­wer and many oth­ers being sac­ri­ficed on the Amer­ic­an leg­al altar — the concept of “judi­cial rendi­tion”, as I have men­tioned before.

Well, I have a the­ory, one derived from per­son­al exper­i­ence. The Brit­ish media — most not­ably the Daily Mail — inveigh against the uni­lat­er­al extra­di­tion of UK cit­izens to the USA’s bru­tal pris­on régime. There is also some con­cern about extra­di­tion to oth­er European jur­is­dic­tions — usu­ally on the fringes to the south and east of the con­tin­ent, regions where the Brit­ish seem to have a vis­cer­al fear of cor­rupt offi­cials and kangaroo courts.

But what many com­ment­at­ors seem to miss is the cru­cial leg­al con­nec­tion — the extra­di­tion arrange­ments that ensure Brits can be shipped off to the US and many oth­erleg­al banana repub­lics com­par­able leg­al sys­tems to face out­rageous sen­tences are, in fact, embed­ded with­in the Extra­di­tion Act 2003. This is the act that enshrined the power of the European Arrest War­rant, the the act that was rushed through Par­lia­ment in the midst of the post‑9/11 ter­ror­ism flap.

And, of course, this is the very act that is cur­rently being used and abused to extra­dite Juli­an Assange to Sweden merely for police ques­tion­ing (he has not even been charged with any crime), whence he can be “tem­por­ar­ily sur­rendered” to the delights of the US judi­cial pro­cess. Hmm, could this pos­sibly be the reas­on for the delay in reform­ing the Act?

Let me guess, you think this is begin­ning to sound a bit tin-foil hat? Surely it is incon­ceiv­able that the Brit­ish politi­cians and judges would delay right­ing a flag­rant leg­al wrong that mani­festly res­ults in inno­cent people being unjustly extra­dited and pro­sec­uted? Surely our gov­ern­ment would move swiftly to pro­tect its cit­izens?

As I men­tioned, my the­ory stems from per­sonal exper­i­ence. Once again delving into the mists of time, in 1997 Dav­id Shayler blew the whistle on the wrong­ful con­vic­tion on ter­ror­ist charges of two inno­cent Palestini­an stu­dents, Samar Alami and Jawad Bot­meh. Their law­yer, the excel­lent Gareth Peirce, was imme­di­ately on the case, but the UK gov­ern­ment dragged its heels for a year. Why?

Dur­ing that time, the UK gov­ern­ment tried to have Shayler extra­dited from France to the UK to stand tri­al. Gov­ern­ment law­yers were con­fid­ent of vic­tory and delayed a decision on the stu­dents’ appeal against their con­vic­tions until the whis­tleblower was safely incar­cer­ated in HMP Bel­marsh, await­ing tri­al.

Except it all went wrong, and the French freed Shayler for being mani­festly a polit­ical whis­tleblower, which in their leg­al opin­ion was not an extra­dict­able offence. Only at that point did the UK gov­ern­ment law­yers begin to work with Peirce on the Palestini­an case, details of which can be found here.

So my the­ory is that the UK is drag­ging its feet about reform­ing the pre­pos­ter­ous Extra­di­tion Act until it has Assange safely over in Sweden. How­ever, they may be count­ing their chick­ens pre­ma­turely — and they should nev­er, ever over­look the determ­in­a­tion of the cam­paign­ing moth­er, in this case Christine Assange.

But in the mean­time, while the UK con­tin­ues to pros­ti­tute itself to the USA, how many more inno­cent people will have to suf­fer unjust and unjus­ti­fi­able extra­di­tion?

About Annie

Annie Machon is a former intelligence officer for MI5, the UK Security Service, who resigned in 1996 to blow the whistle on the spies' incompetence and crimes. Drawing on her varied experiences, she is now a media pundit, author, journalist, political campaigner, and PR consultant. More

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